I. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication, and more specifically to techniques for receiving a signal in a wireless communication system.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as voice, packet data, video, broadcast, messaging, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication for multiple users by sharing the available system resources. Examples of such multiple-access systems include Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) systems, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) systems, and Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) systems.
A wireless device (e.g., a cellular phone) in a CDMA system typically employs a rake receiver. The rake receiver includes one or more searcher elements and multiple demodulation elements, which are commonly referred to as searchers and fingers, respectively. Due to the relatively wide bandwidth of a CDMA signal, a wireless communication channel is assumed to be composed of a finite number of resolvable signal paths, or multipaths. Each multipath is characterized by a particular complex gain and a particular time delay. The searcher(s) search for strong multipaths in a received signal, and fingers are assigned to the strongest multipaths found by the searcher(s). Each finger processes its assigned multipath and provides symbol estimates for that multipath. The symbol estimates from all assigned fingers are then combined to obtain final symbol estimates. The rake receiver can provide acceptable performance for a CDMA system operating at low signal-to-interference-and-noise ratios (SNRs).
The rake receiver has a number of shortcomings. First, the rake receiver is not able to effectively handle multipaths with time delays separated by less than one chip period, which is often referred to as a “fat-path” scenario. Second, the rake receiver typically provides suboptimal performance at high geometry, which corresponds to high SNRs. Third, complicated circuitry and control functions are normally needed to search the received signal to find strong multipaths, to assign fingers to newly found multipaths, and to de-assign fingers from vanishing multipaths.
There is therefore a need in the art for a receiver that can ameliorate the shortcomings of a rake receiver.